Free Indirect Discourse in Mrs. Dalloway In Mrs.

Dalloway, Woolf was

in search of a new narrative strategy. She recognized that “neither
dialogue nor narrator summary” would suffice for presenting the
complex human consciousness (Jones 1997, 70). As Woolf herself
wrote, she “would have devised a method, clear and composed as
ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for conveying not only what
people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only what they are, but
what life is” (1925, 59). In her diary, Woolf calls this literary Erik
Groot 25 technique ”tunneling”, on which she wrote the following: “I
shall say a good deal about the hours and my discovery: how I dig out
beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I
want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall
connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment” (Woolf
1953, 60). The narrator plays an important role in FID, even though
she may be mostly invisible in a majority of FID passages. The
difference between FID and both DD and ID is the extent to which
the narrator is visible in the text. In DD, the narrator barely gets a
word in (only contributing the reporting phrase) while in ID the
narrator is very prominent. In FID, however, the narratorial presence
lies somewhere in between. It can be hard to distinguish between
the character’s voice and the narrator’s. As Hoff puts it: “The
narrator […] must almost always share the stage with the characters
it seems, expressing their narrated focalizations, hardly getting a
word in edgewise as conventional narrators usually can do. Still,
narratorial intrusions occasionally come in the form of parentheses—
sometimes occupying an entire paragraph, sometimes excavating
only a part of the paragraph, sometimes merely claiming a small
space in the middle of a sentence” (2009, 256). These narratorial
intrusions occur frequently in passages of FID in Mrs. Dalloway and
are used by the narrator to subtly comment on characters, events or
situations. Because these comments occur in the middle of the
thoughts or speech of characters, it can be hard sometimes to make
a distinction between character and narrator. That is exactly Erik
Groot 26 what makes these comments so subtle. The following
sentence contains such a comment: (7) “Evelyn was a good deal out
of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very
well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly up- holstered
body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to
be, with his little job at Court)[…]” (6). This passage occurs in the
beginning of the novel, when Clarissa goes out to buy flowers and
runs into Hugh. The passage is surrounded by instances of FID and
the reader mostly sees Clarissa’s POV. Hugh is portrayed as nothing
less than a handsome gentleman, until the parentheses. Especially
the ”little job at court” is quite condescending towards Hugh and
makes the rest of the sentence (wellcovered, manly, extremely
handsome, etc.) seem ironic. When such a sentence is embedded in
sentences that show Clarissa’s POV, it is easily read as being
Clarissa’s thoughts. However, from the context it becomes clear that
Clarissa is one of the few characters in the novel that actually likes
Hugh and would never say a bad word about him. Consequently, the
reader can presume that this comment belongs to the narrator, who
is subtly commenting on this character. About the undermining of
characters by the narrator, Hoff also mentions that “[t]he narrator’s
double perspective in free indirect discourse is responsible for
exposing […] the flaws of these personages” (2009, 245). So although
the narrator may seem invisible most of Erik Groot 27 the time, she
stays at the surface, ready to comment on anything at any given
moment. Not only does the narrator give comments through
bracketed statements, she also comments on what she sees as the
faults of society through the words of other characters. Take, for
example, the scene where William Bradshaw orders Septimus to six
months rest to treat his condition. (8) “To his patients he gave three-
quarters of an hour; and if in this exacting science […] a doctor loses
his sense of proportion, as a doctor he fails. Health we must have;
and health is proportion; so that when a man comes into your room
and says he is Christ (a common delusion), and has a message, as
they mostly have, and threatens, as they often do, to kill himself, you
invoke proportion; order rest in bed; rest in solitude; silence and
rest; rest without friends, without books, without messages; six
months’ rest; until a man who went in weighing seven stone six
comes out weighing twelve” (99). Sir William Bradshaw is so sure of
himself that he has no doubt about this treatment for Septimus’
condition. On the one hand, this passage of FID can be interpreted
from Bradshaw’s POV, that would be the ‘standard’ reading of this
passage. A doctor that does what he thinks is best to cure a patient.
However, as the novel makes clear, Peter is suffering from shell-
shock, a condition that cannot be cured by ordering six months rest
in isolation. The other reading is thus that of the narrator as
focalizer, Erik Groot 28 who, through Bradshaw’s words, criticizes the
medical world. As Marnie Langeroodi writes: “Woolf witnessed that
her contemporaries failed to recognize shell shock as a serious
mental condition, and uses Bradshaw as a vehicle through which to
attack the medical community ill equipped to heal Septimus” (2014).
Another important function of FID in Mrs. Dalloway is what was
already touched in this thesis, namely the multiple interpretations
that are open to the reader. Because the POV of almost every
character in the novel is expressed through FID, the reader not only
sees what different characters think about each other without a clear
narrative authority, the reader is also given a dual voice, that of the
narrator and that of the character. According to Dumitru Ciocoi-Pop,
“the function of this dualism is […] that it makes it possible for an
outside consciousness (the reader’s) to follow, understand and
interpret the minds of the characters which the author creates”
(2002, 41). The difficult part of this dual voice is that it is sometimes
hard to distinguish between character and narrator. This in turn has
an effect on how the reader interprets a certain event or situation.
Margaret Doody writes that “[o]ur judgment emerges slowly, under
the quiet guidance of the author, and can be completely formed only
when we understand a character’s point of view” (Doody in Jones
1997, 77). Thus the reader essentially has to side with the character
or the narrator to interpret the event or situation before he can form
his judgment about the characters. As suggested before, many
readers will interpret the events and situations differently and thus
will form a different opinion about what he or she reads. This is in
line with Doody’s point: “The author makes us see the world as the
Erik Groot 29 character sees it, and we must comprehend his view
before rejecting or modifying it” (Ibid.). A clear example of this
polyphonic effect can be seen in the sentence below: (9) “She
understood; she understood without his speaking; his Clarissa” (118).
This is the scene where Richard Dalloway comes home from the
lunch with Lady Bruton and brings home flowers for Clarissa. He
desperately wants to tell her that he loves her but for some reason,
he does not say it. He hands her the flowers without saying that he
loves her. Sentence (9) can be interpreted in two clear, but very
different ways. First of all, the reader can interpret this to be the
voice of the narrator who is only observing and describing what
happens. The “his Clarissa” at the end of the sentence can in that
case be interpreted as the narrator commenting on how naïve
Richard actually is. On the other hand, the reader can interpret this
to be the voice of Richard, who may so naïve to think that he does
not have to say that he loves his wife and giving her flowers might be
enough. Clearly, these two different interpretations make for
different judgments about the characters. In the first interpretation
(that of the narrator’s voice) the reader most likely has a much
better impression of Richard than in the second interpretation.
Because in FID the narrator takes on the idiom of the character to
create a polyphonic effect, the character language is also an
important part in translation. The character’s imprint then comes
from “the presence of […] emphatic markers which are typical of
orality, i.e. exclemations, questions” or any other emphatic marker
that Erik Groot 30 is usually not expressed by a narrator (Faini 2012,
40). Take the following sentence from Mrs. Dalloway: (10)
“Goodness knows he didn’t want to go buying necklaces with Hugh”
(113 [emphasis mine]). In this sentence we see a clear sign of an
emphatic marker, namely the “goodness knows”, which is a typical
expression that can be ascribed to the character instead of the
narrator. This kind of emotional expression is usually not used by
narrators and it gives the reader a mix of a narratorial frame, with a
single expression that can be ascribed to the character. Without it,
the sentence would be more easily interpreted as the narrator’s
voice but because of the expression, the reader ends up with this
dual voice. Basically, with this ambiguity that is inherent in FID it is
up to the reader to choose sides in this novel. It requires close
reading to pick up on all the clues that might point to either the
character’s voice or the narrator’s. Apart from the narrator who
gives subtle critique of characters and society, the most important
function of FID in Mrs. Dalloway is the ability leave the
interpretations of events and situations up to the reader, who,
according to Jones, “are continually being asked to suspend [their]
judgment of them until all evidence is compiled.